Silent protest held outside main building to campaign for animal rights

September 26, 2016

2 Min Read

By Maria Mellor

An animal rights group held a silent protest outside Cardiff University’s main building on Friday (September 23).

Protesters gathered outside the main gates on Park Place with blindfolds on and fake blood dripping down their arms.

The event was held in aid of Animal Justice Project’s new campaign ‘Campus Without Cruelty’. They found that Cardiff University experimented on 52,564 animals last year including rats, mice, rabbits and birds. This ranks them as the biggest user of animals out of all Welsh universities.

While the university claims that the use of these animals is “essential”, according to Animal Justice Project they are typically killed after they are no longer of any use to researchers.

Many of the protesters at the event held signs indicating the numbers of animals used last year in order to raise awareness.

Claire Palmer founder of the organisation said: “This is our first event for the Campus Without Cruelty campaign.

“Since we launched a week and a half ago, we’ve been contacted by students at Kings College London, Durham University, Birmingham University, Imperial College, Leeds University.

“As a zoologist myself I understand the pressure that students go through when they’re trying to pass their exams and you’ve got peer pressure, pressure to publish papers and so we’re really trying to act as a support base as well so it’s a double edged campaign.”

Dr Andre Menache, science adviser for Animal Justice Project said: “Hopefully the day is near when an animal researcher at Cardiff University is courageous and honest enough to announce that these experiments were a complete waste of animal lives and public funding.”